New Media Artist

For my new media artist, I chose Eva and Franco Mattes, or 0100101110101101.org. They utilize current forms of technology as a medium. The majority of their projects incorporate the internet, and computer technology. They refer to themselves as 0100101110101101.org and don't reveal a lot of personal information about themselves.

HYBRIDS

"Hybrids" is a collection of 31 works that the artists refer to as digital collages. They are essentially HTML documents, containing fragments of common, easily identifiable computer graphics and images. Some of them include forms or buttons that are common on most web pages, but they are useless or perform some random function. Each piece is connected to the following one, which lets the viewer start anywhere in the sequence and continue endlessly.
Hybrids is an example of new technology being exploited creatively. The majority of the effects are created using HTML and javascript, which are very basic programming languages and weren't necessarily intended for creating graphic art.
One of the goals of the work, according to the artists, was "to make a statement on some of the main themes of digital art: the issues of reproducibility, authenticity and the sharing of knowledge." By using a mundane programming language and simply edited graphics, they've created work that is easily reproduced, but as a result authorship isn't immediately clear.
A spokesperson for the artists notes that "there is no creative aspect, because all pages work well together, and all the visuals and composition has been done for you. You may rearrange the segments of a source code, but that's just production work."

Biennale.py

In 2001, for the Venice Biennale show, 0100101110101101.org and the epidemiC organization sucessfully programmed a relatively benign computer virus, named Biennale.py, and released it at the show's opening, June 6th 2001. An example of the virus is contained in the piece Perpetual Self Dis/Infecting Machine, where it perpetually attempts to infect a computer that isn't connected to any network. The virus was on display in 2004's I Love You rev.eng exhibit in Frankfurt, Germany, with other viruses. The artists expressed an interest in seeing "how the public, press and police respond to a peaceful virus."
I just like the idea that they created something that will multiply and stay on the internet forever.

Vopos

The Vopos project involved technology such as GPS locators, computers, telephones, and the internet. Both Eva and Franco Mattes made the majority of their lives accessible to the public via the internet and other sources, for one year. They wore GPS locators that plotted their location online. They made their private computers available, as they logged every telephone call made for one month of the project.

Essay on Hybrids
Wired Magazine, 06/27/01 article on Biennale.py
Link to Biennale.py (you probably shouldn't click this).
VOPOS GPS Database